Two Prudential Plaza is a skyscraper that was built in Chicago in 1990. At 995 feet (303 m) tall, it is the fifth-tallest building in Chicago and the tenth tallest in the United States. The building was designed by the firm Loebl, Schlossman & Hackl, with Stephen T. Wright as the principal in charge of design. It has also been honored with 8 awards. At the time of completion Two Prudential was the world’s second tallest reinforced concrete building. Its distinctive shape features stacked chevron setbacks on the north & south sides, a pyramidal peak rotated 45°, and an 80-foot spire.

One Prudential Plaza (formerly known as the Prudential Building), a 44 story structure facaded in vertical strips of limestone and ridged aluminum, was completed in 1955 as the headquarters for Prudential’s Mid-America company. At the time, the skyscraper , designed by Naess & Murphy was significant as the first new downtown skyscraper built in Chicago in 21 years since the Field Building, now headquarters of LaSalle Bank, in 1934. When the Prudential was finished it had the highest roof in Chicago with only the statue of Ceres on the Chicago Board of Trade higher.

Now simply called 150 N. Michigan Ave, the Smurfit-Stone Building is a 41 story, 575 foot skyscraper. It is also known as the Stone Container Building and was formerly called the Associates Center. It is popularly referred to as the Diamond Building. Construction began in 1983 and was completed in 1984. The building, noted for its unusually slanted roof, was designed by Sheldon Schlegman of A. Epstein and Sons. Its 41 floors does not include five unused levels in the narrowest portion at the very peak of the diamond. Although the building looks as though it is split down the middle, the two sides are only slightly disjointed until nearing the top, where there is a gap between them. At times, its slanted roof–which has been likened to a skyscraper slashed with a knife–displays local sports anthems on its face, such as “GO BEARS” and “GO CUBS”. A popular urban legend states that the building was designed to resemble a vagina, but a spokesperson for the architectural firm that designed the building denied that it was supposed to be an anti-phallic symbol. Three years after it’s completion, the building played a central role in Touchstone Pictures hit film, Adventures in Babysitting. Thus, many Chicagoans refer to this building as the Adventures in Babysitting building.

Tuesday 01-23-07. What we know today as Otis’ Ahmanson Hall was originally the IBM Aerospace Headquarters building. Designed by Eliot Noyes and Associates along with A.Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons, it was finished in 1963. It has been featured in several architectural articles because of its unique pattern- designed to resemble an IBM “punch card.”

Today Ahamanson Hall houses 5 of our BFA programs (Toy Design, Communication Arts, Architecture/Landscape/Interiors, Interactive Product Design and Digital Media. It is also home to the Millard Sheets Library, the Admissions office, Student Affairs and many other administrative offices.

The building relates in scale to the mixed residential and commercial area of Omotesando, with the soft texture of the metal fabric on the facade conveying the texture of fallen leaves from the big zelkova trees in front of the building.

The exterior is double layered with three different kinds of metal mesh fabric and two kinds of polished stainless steel panels; rose and gold. Glass panels with a striped pattern, as the inner layer, give depth to the appearance.
By overlaying the silver color of the metal fabric and rose and gold tint of the back panel, the color is getting also ambiguous, and losing a sense of materiality.

The folded skin, used in combination with the sloping glass facade, generates a spectacular entrance at the Prins Hendrikkade and gives the building volume an extremely sober perspective at the east side. On the waterside of the building the different levels are visible through the glazed facade.

Seventeen years after it was founded, ARCAM now plays an important part in Amsterdam’s cultural climate; a full-fledged architecture centre which organizes discussions and exhibitions, issues publications and a news bulletin, and which in recent years has added educational, digital and international projects to its activities.

This dynamic focal point of the enterprise is made visually evident in the proposed dynamic spatial system that encompasses the whole northern front of the factory and articulates the central building as the point of confluence and culmination of the various converging flows. It seems as if the whole of the expanse on this side of the factory is oriented and animated by a force field emanating from the central building. All movement converging on the site is funneled through this compression chamber squeezed in-between the three main segments of production: Body in White, Paint Shop and Assembly.

The Central Building is the active nerve-centre or brain of the whole factory complex. All threads of the building’s activities gather together and branch out again from here.
This planning strategy applies to the cycles and trajectories of people - workers and visitors - as well as for the cycle and progress of the production line which traverses this central point - departing and returning again.

Client: BMW AG
Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects
Design: Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher
Project Architects: Jim Heverin/Lars Teichmann (Zaha Hadid)

By the way, this is one of the best-designed mix-use mega highrise projects I’ve seen anywhere. It’s simple and modern. It’s done by a Beijing-born Japanese architect, Riken Yamamoto. It’s like a New York loft apartment building done in the style of a typical Vancouver building. Quite handsome. And the massive complex as a whole creates very interesting visual textures at the street level.

Beijing and China have finally moved away from tacky architecture, but they’re unfortunately still stuck in the mindset of using tacky English names for their great new bulidings. The current buzzwords seem to be “Soho” and “MoMA.” Everything is Soho-this, or MOMA-that. They’re co-opting these place names from NYC to lend cachet to their projects.

Designed to resemble a billowing sail, the hotel soars to a height of 321 meters, dominating the Dubai coastline. At night, it offers an unforgettable sight, surrounded by choreographed color sculptures of water and fire. This all-suite hotel reflects the finest that the world has to offer.

This is the final model. Unable to whiten the background, cause this was taken in the super midnight, or the morning of the submission day. Use two Ikea table lamps, but was not enough to edit perfectly : (. Procastinate-lar. This was only 85% done, with the stairs and swamp trees be completed after a good nap. Fhoa, rushed the whole day! But was happy with the outcome though.

1:50 scale model. Small, considering the width of the floor planks for each floors only 2 meters wide. But still livable. Landscape is printed works of Dr.Seuss on some really nice envelope kind of paper, and corrugated board Uhu-ed on A3 MDF board. One of the thingyest thing as well, is the cost to make it. Spent only $ 1.60 for the entire model (excluding MDF board, and perspex aquarium thingy). Mostly on Satay sticks, and RM 0.80 for the brown paper. Others are recycable material, well, since mudder Earth starts complaining.

Twenty-five feet wide and 81 feet deep, glazed with dramatic glass panels, the 24-story tower soars upward 280 feet, occupying the full width of its footprint from street level to pinnacle.

The narrow skyscraper is the new venue for presentation of contemporary Austrian arts and Austrian-American collaboration in many disciplines: music, visual arts, architecture and design, digital and Web projects, literature, film and video.

Abraham divided the building into three vertical parts; “the Mask”, “the Vertebra” and “the Core”. The most visible segment, “the Mask”, is the facade of teal-colored glass that tapers upwards to comply with zoning laws. The diagonal steel braces are visible behind the glass skin. A protruding box-like volume, containing the director’s office, cantilevers over the space housing the institute’s glass enclosed Library.
Next comes “the Core” that contain the main structural elements and enclosed spaces and, to the rear of the building, “the Vertebrae”, the metal-sheathed double fire stairwell that lines the back of the building. Read the rest of this entry »

May 4, 2001, marked the initial unveiling of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s new expansion and renovation which combines art, dramatic architecture and landscape design. Our new Quadracci Pavilion, the first Santiago Calatrava-designed building in the United States, features a 90-foot high glass-walled reception hall enclosed by the Burke Brise Soleil, a sunscreen that can be raised or lowered creating a unique moving sculpture.

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